Outrageous Farce From R. Kelly: He’s In on the Joke, Right? (Published 2007) (2024)

What is there to say, really, about a multipart R&B soap opera cum sex farce starring an expanding cast of actors and actresses, all lip-syncing to the increasingly kaleidoscopic story-songs of a pop star once known for slow jams and “I Believe I Can Fly”?

Plenty, it seems. Because people have been talking about R. Kelly’s unprecedented audiovisual opus, “Trapped in the Closet,” ever since its premiere, two summers ago. A 5-part single mushroomed into a 12-part DVD, and in retrospect, his timing looks perfect. The DVD arrived in late 2005, just as YouTube was taking off, and “Trapped” became a viral hit. It was the kind of pop spectacle you had to see to believe; thanks to the online video explosion you could.

Back then, Mr. Kelly promised that “Trapped” would return, and now it has: the IFC channel’s Web site has been showing a new episode every day, leading up to tomorrow’s DVD release of “Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 13-22” (Jive). Mr. Kelly’s outlandish achievement seems to inspire overstatement, especially online. The Web site for New York magazine (nymag.com) proclaimed this “the cultural event of the year,” while one fairly typical commenter at ifc.com called it “a perfect storm of the worst artistry ever.”

No doubt Mr. Kelly is enjoying all the attention. He seems drawn to the idea of being an old-fashioned all-around entertainer, and he has recently taken to performing beneath a lit-up sign that reads, “R. Kelly as Mr. Show Biz.” He already stands as one of the last true giants in the twinned worlds of R&B and hip-hop, and now he’s relishing the idea of branching out into IFC territory. (He told Variety he “thought of ‘Trapped’ as an independent film.”) Mr. Kelly seems giddier than ever.

And yet there is something slightly unnerving about the kind of attention “Trapped in the Closet” has received. Many of its biggest fans seem to think they’re laughing at Mr. Kelly, not with him, as if the whole thing were some sort of glorious, terrible mistake; as if the far-fetched plot turns (most infamously, the policeman cuckolded by the “midget” hiding beneath the sink) and cliffhanger endings (“Oh my God, a rubber!”) were the work of someone who set out to make a traditional musical and failed. It’s hard to think of a work that has inspired more parodies, from Weird Al to Jimmy Kimmel, from sketch comedy to cabaret. Why do so many people think the funniest pop star on the planet is the butt of the joke when he is so obviously in on it?

Maybe it comes with the territory. R&B lovermen have long been parodied as comically earnest lotharios, blissfully unaware of how ridiculous they sound. But Mr. Kelly long ago realized that a subtle joke, or an unsubtle one, can make a slow jam feel more intimate and therefore more effective. No doubt more than a few couples have used “Feelin on Yo Booty” as mood music, chuckling contentedly when the chorus suddenly morphs into a yodeling demonstration.

Listen closely, and you can hear Mr. Kelly chuckling too. Ever since the appearance in 2002 of a video that the police say shows him with an under-age girl, his jokes have grown bigger and sillier. Maybe that’s an expression of his relief at the way his career has rebounded from scandal. Or maybe it’s an expression of his continuing anxiety about his forthcoming trial on charges of child p*rnography. (It is scheduled to start Sept. 17 in Chicago.) Or maybe it’s just a phase.

If it is a phase, it’s an extraordinarily entertaining one. Mr. Kelly’s obsession with comedy is also an obsession with plot and narrative. And his most recent album, “Double Up,” contains elegant theatrical songs like “Same Girl,” the hit Usher duet about a two-timing woman; “Best Friend,” a prison drama; and “Real Talk,” a defensive boyfriend’s bilious rant. In this last song, Mr. Kelly takes an absurd three-word phrase — “Is you tweakin’?” — and makes it funny, scary, believable and diabolically catchy. “Trapped in the Closet” may be an anomaly, but it’s no fluke.

Some “Trapped” fans may think they’re flattering Mr. Kelly by praising his alleged insanity or naïveté, but that’s the kind of praise that can easily sound like condescension, especially when directed (as it often is) at African-American performers. And some IFC viewers might not know that Mr. Kelly is deploying some of the same dramatic devices you can find in the world of urban theater, sometimes affectionately or derisively called the chitlin circuit.” Many of his stock characters (the pastor with a secret, the nosy neighbors, the semireformed ex-con, the stuttering pimp) and melodramatic revelations would be at home in a play by Tyler Perry, Shelly Garrett, Angela Barrow-Dunlap or David E. Talbert.

As “Trapped” spirals out from its soap opera beginnings, the action and the songwriting get looser, in ways good and bad. There are some great and cheerfully extraneous scenes in a church, when the familiar backing track gives way to comic gospel. Mr. Kelly adopts more roles, and in Chapter 15 he gets an unlikely co-star: the indie-rock hero Will Oldham, on screen for only a few seconds. And although “Trapped” isn’t tuneless, exactly, Mr. Kelly generally recycles the same few tunes, and sometimes chooses exposition over meter.

In the new chapters, as in the old ones, there are some marvelous set pieces: scenes full of carefully choreographed cross-talk, an echo of the famous closet scene from Chapter 1, an oddly pretty evocation of poor cellphone reception (“Static-in’,” he explains, sotto voce), an occasional dash of falsetto sweetness. There are missteps too, especially an overlong Mafia scene. You can also feel Mr. Kelly drift further from the tension and claustrophobia that characterized the early episodes.

In the beginning “Trapped” was rooted in the first-person narration of Mr. Kelly as Sylvester: “7 o’clock in the morning, and rays from the sun wakes me.” By Chapter 8 Mr. Kelly had acquired a second role as the cigar-smoking narrator, broadening the story’s scope (we could see things Sylvester didn’t) but slightly undermining its intensity. And by Chapter 10 Sylvester’s speech had gone third person: “Sylvester said,” instead of “I said.” That was when the plot got more farcical; instead of inhabiting Sylvester, Mr. Kelly was toying with him or making him a bystander. One odd thing about the new chapters is that nothing much happens to Sylvester.

At least until near the end. No one likes a spoiler, but suffice it to say that Mr. Kelly finds a clever way to bring the story back to its sex-and-deception roots, culminating in a mesmerizing song composed of phone-call fragments. It’s eerie and funny, a reminder that Mr. Kelly can make great music more or less whenever he feels like it. And, just when you thought this was all an elaborate joke, the ending is surprisingly sad. Surely Chapter 23, whenever it comes, will bring — well, it would be foolish to guess. But here’s hoping Mr. Kelly’s dramatic phase isn’t over yet.